In 2012, the man was arrested for paying a girl under the age of 18 for sexual favors. He was charged with violating child prostitution laws and fined 500,000 yen. However, his name and news reports regarding the arrest still come up in Google searches.

Claiming that this was an infringement upon his personal rights, the man petitioned to have the information deleted from the search engine. His lawyer told the court his client had been rehabilitated and that it was difficult to get on with his life as long as his arrest record remains online.

In handing down the ruling, the presiding judge said such relatively minor crimes do not hold any particular significance to the public and therefore continuing to display such information three years after the incident does not have much merit for society at large.

Someone needs to learn how Google and the internets work. Deleting links from Google’s search engine will not make the stories go away nor will it make them more difficult to find. In fact, this ruling will likely shed more light on his asshattery.

As an aside, I find it quite interesting how the presiding judge considers underage sexual solicitation to have been a “relatively minor crime” considering how damaging it likely will be to her for the rest of her life. Unbelievably out of touch.

SCOTT (すこっと)

Scott (すこっと) is a cyber security, threat intelligence strategist, and technology evangelist working and living in Tokyo. In addition to his day job, Scott is fascinated by the future of computing, the technology industry, privacy, encryption, mobile apps, politics, & Japan. Scott enjoys taking pictures with his iPhone and sharing them freely online, primarily on Instagram.